I recently installed Sharepoint 2013 onto a test server to look at the possibilities of upgrading our 2010 instance. After the installation, I noticed that far more DBs were created on my SQL Server. The databases I am not familiar with are:

AppMng_Service_DB

Bdc_Service_DB

Search_Service_Application_AnalyticsReportingStoreDB

Search_Service_Application_CrawlStoreDB

Search_Service_Application_DB

Search_Service_Application_LinksStoreDB

Secure_Store_Service_DB

StateService

We have a very simple implementation of Sharepoint, where the core functionality we need is the Document Repository Piece, which works just fine with the few databases that were created on the 2010 instance. My question is, are these databases truly needed, and if not, what is the best process in removing them from my structure. Please let me know if anymore information is needed. Thanks

1 Answer
1

These databases are mostly used by specific service applications.
If you navigate to central administration and manage service applications you'll see which service applications are currently running on your farm. Each service app generally uses its own database which you can decipher from the database name.

Turn off the services you don't require from central admin and delete the service applications. If you view the details of each respective service application, it will tell you the database its using.